Latest Breaking News On - Martin simon - Page 1 : vimarsana.com

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20140714

nominees to serve on the u.s. postal service board of governors. the hearing follows postmaster general patrick donahoe's announcement that they will -- [inaudible] 3 p.m. eastern on c-span3. >> we are at the henry a. wallace country life center which is 50 miles south and west of des moines. and this is the birthplace home of henry a. wallace. the wallaces of iowa consist of three generations of wallaces. the patriarch was known as, fondly, as uncle henry, and he was the founder of wallaces farmer magazine. his son, henry c. wallace, was u.s. secretary of agriculture under woodrow wilson, and henry c.'s son was born on this farm this 1888. he went on to become editor of wallace's farmer magazine. he was then asked by franklin roosevelt to serve as u.s. secretary of agriculture which he did for eight years from 1933-1941. and 1941-1945 he was roosevelt's vice president. as u.s. secretary of agriculture, he's known for the agricultural adjustment act which was the first time that farmers were asked not to produce. at first people couldn't belief the things that he was -- believe the things that he was proposing regarding that, but then as prices went up, they started to listen to him. and people still refer to him today as the genius secretary of agriculture. >> explore the history and literary life of des moines, iowa, saturday at noon eastern on c-span2's booktv and sunday afternoon at two on american history tv on c-span3. >> and another session now from last weekend's national governors association summer meeting. coming up next, a discussion on strategies for helping the nation's veterans transition to civilian employment. speakers include labor deputy assistant secretary teresa gerton and the defense department's director of its veterans transition program. also speaking were representatives from state governments as well as private sector businesses involved in hiring veteranning. governor jay nixon of missouri, chair of the national governor's association committee on homeland security and public safety, was the moderator. >> we're going to go ahead and get started. good afternoon. i'm governor jay nixon of the show me state charity nj homeland security and public safety committee. i now call this meeting to order. welcome, governors, guests, and thank you for joining today's session. i'm honored to serve as committee leadership this year with governor rick snyder. governor snyder's unable to be with us today, but i thank him very much for his work. equally, i want to thank governor branstad of iowa who's stepping in today as the vice chair, a heartbeat away from the microphone here. so -- [laughter] if i find myself not able, our able leader will take over and get us to the finish line. i'd like to begin with just a few administrative issues. the briefing books were sent in advance, include biographies and background information. the proceedings of this committee are open to the press and all meeting attendees. as a consideration, please take a moment to insure that your cell phones are silenced or whatever, and if not, if it's a really interesting call, share it with all of us. [laughter] seated next to me is justin stephens, committee legislative director. please see him if you need copies of any materials or any sort of assistance. now, today's session will focus on sharing strategies and strengthening partnerships to provide meaningful and long-term employment for our nation's veterans. the session is designed as a structured discussion with a distinguished panel of guests offering a diverse set of federal, state and private sector perspectives on veterans employment. our panel will provide governors an opportunity to learn more about efforts to improve federal programs and interagency coordination, share innovative practices among the states and discuss ways to strengthen the public/private partnerships with employers. in recent years thousands of men and women who serve in uniform have left military service as our commitments overseas are coming to a conclusion. as service members return to their communities and to civilian lives, many are facing unique employment challenges that require assistance to reintegrate into the society which they fought to defend. while federal data shows that positive progress is being made in loring the unemployment rate for -- lowering the unemployment rate for veterans, the unemployment rate of veterans since 9/11 is above the number for the average folks, and we're about the task of making sure that that statistic is one that we do not have, you know, a year from now as we all work together. across the country governors are leading statewide of efforts to address the considerable challenges many service members and their families face leaving military service. we all know our veterans fought for us, and we're going the fight for them. that's why in many states including missouri we have taken action to remove barriers and ease transition to the civilian work force such as the issues with the state certification and licensure. we have signed bills in that regard, many other states have done that, and i thank everybody for their tremendous work. governors are dedicating additional resources to developing a host of new or improved programs to improve veterans' access to benefits and services, meet the specialized needs of those with disabilities and expand be access to long-term employment and educational opportunities. we have a program called show me heroes you'll hear about in a little while here. got started very similarly. i was in afghanistan meeting with a group that was getting ready to go out to keel with some ieds, very difficult evening shift, 7:00 at night, and they were putting on their armor, felt like a high school locker room as everybody's getting fired up to get out there and deal with the bad guys. so i turned to a young fellow from missouri, and i said, what scares you thinking he'd say ieds or somebody shooting him. he leaped over and said do you know what scares me? not having a job when i get home, that's what scares me. and i think we've all heard stories of one form or another like that and, consequently, we're trying to do a lot of things. our show me heroes now has over 4,000 employers that are involved in that program including some of the employers you'll hear from today, enterprise rental and exdepress scripps, and it's important to note -- express scripts and they've already hired more than 6,800 veterans this our state, and we recognize those employers with an award called the flag of freedom. for those of you, it's a very simple flag. folks that are in service when they're in theater, they rip the subdued flag off their shoulder and send it back to us, we make those into plaques so the folks, the employers actually get something that was worn in battle for our country, and we tremendously appreciate the soldiers, veterans and companies. so show me heroes has been a win/win/win for us, but it's not a one-size-fits-all program. while the unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans has dropped significantly from its peak, we still have too many folks unemployed. the trend lines are going in the right direction though. they clearly, clearly are, and that's why we wanted to have this session here, to hear best practices to make sure we were moving forward. before we get started and introduce the panel, let me turn to governor branstad for any opening comments that he would like to have. our vice chair, governor terry branstad, from the great state of iowa. >> governor nixon, thank you, and thank for your leadership on this very important issue. in iowa this year i'm proud to say my top priority, which i announced in the condition of the state address, was something we call home base iowa. very similar to your show me heroes program. it included, first of all, eliminating the military, the iowa income tax on military retirement. it also provides in-state tuition for all veterans whether they came from iowa or not to at our state universities and community colleges. it also simplifies the process for them getting profession alliancing and -- professional licensing and giving credit for their military training and education. when they go to our colleges and universities. we also have appointed a bipartisan group of leaders, former congressman boswell who's a democrat and bob meyer who is the ceo of casey's general store. they're both retired colonels, they're friends, and they are working very hard, and the effort there is to actually line up, because the lieutenant governor and i hear all the time from businesses we have good jobs available, we can't find people with the right skills. people coming out of the military that have leadership skills and technical skills that fit in with that, and so we're working really hard to make that information available and to market directly to those. we also have an opportunity for communities to become home base communities, for businesses to become home base businesses by setting certain goals,s, and we also extended veterans preference laws to give private sector businesses the same opportunities to provide veterans preference that state and local governments do in the state of iowa. this was a very ambitious program. i'm proud to say it received bipartisan support or, and i had the honor of signing it on memorial day at camp dodge which is the headquarters of the iowa national guard, and i lost 12.5 pounds and wore my uniform to sign the bill. so i'm really proud to have had that opportunity. [laughter] debi durham was on the panel, and it's in her department that's going to be implementing this working very closely with tim orr, our outstanding agitant general and with our, also, our work force development people in the state of iowa. but we think it's a great program, and we want to do all we can. we also have a $5,000 stipend that we give to veterans who are purchasing homes. it can go towards down payment or closing costs, and we increase the funding for that to make sure there was an adequate amount that every veteran that applies for that can receive that tax credit. so i'm excited about it. we're just beginning to implement it. we've got two counties already that have been designated as home base and our major iowa association, the iowa business council, all of the major employers in iowa have signed on to be home base businesses, and we're seeing just a lot of interest all throughout the state, and i think we'll see many other counties and communities participate. with that, i'll turn it back to governor nixon. >> thank you. the -- one thing in iowa going one step further, not only hiring veterans, but a weight loss program also. [laughter] >> we want to be the healthiest state in the nation. [laughter] >> got the scalpel in there. anyway, thank you, governor branstad. i'm going to introduce the panelists here, and then we want to have an engagement between us. rather than sit here and listen to an hourlong speech by anybody, whatever, we have a very good panel. you'll see very quickly how it lays out as a really interesting panel, and i think over the next 40, 45 minutes we can have a really good, engaged discussion here. first is teresa gerton, veterans employment and training service at the u.s. department of labor. this office serves veterans by preparing them for meaningful careers, providing employment resources and expertise and protecting their employment rights. in addition to the d. of labor, ms. gerton also is in several senior-level executive positions in the department of defense. a veteran herself, ms. gerton is a west point graduate and served in a variety of staff and leadership positions during her distinguished 20-year career with the u.s. army. our next panelist, susan kelly, is the direct ever of the transition to veterans program in the d. of defense. d. kelly leads the office -- dr. kelly leads the office in charge of implementing the program to meet the needs of post-9/11 service members as they separate from active duty and enter civilian life. dr. kelly also serves with the steering group efforts for dod and the coordination with five different federal agencies. she has a long and distinguished career in various off thes of the department of defense and holding her doctorate in marriage and family from st. louis university. debi durham is director of the iowa economic development authority and oversees economic development programs for the state including veterans-related initiatives such as home base iowa. before leading iowa's economic development agency, ms. durham served as president of the sioux land chamber of commerce. next is jeff harris, my policy director since january of 2009. prior to joining my office, he was a member of the missouri house of representatives from 2003-2009 including serving as house minority leader from november 2004 to september of 2007. prior to his election in the house, mr. harris was an assistant attorney general in kansas city. moon passino is assistant vice president of human resources at enterprise holdings, also wins the coolest name contest today. [laughter] headquarteredded in st. louis, operates enterprise rent a car as well as the enterprise represent a car brand. the company offers car rental and car-sharing services, corporate fleet management and retail car sales. many passino has served be the company for 20 years in various capacities, rental operate operations and -- [inaudible] and jonah houts is also headquartered in st. louis, missouri, one of the leading full-service pharmacy management benefit companies. the company coordinates the distribution of outpatient farm suit calls through a combination of benefit management services including retail drug card programs, home deliverly services and other clinical management programs. joining express scripts in 2004, mr. houts spent several years in product development and corporate quality before leading the company's corporate policy and advocacy efforts. now, done with that. good panel. i mean, obviously, got federal folks that understand the various agencies, state folks that have made progress and private sector folks who have embraced this and hired literally thousands of veterans through a myriad of programs. i want to thank everybody for being here. rather than going through the routine of having each of our panelists give a presentation, i'd like to jump right back in. no one here is shy, our goal is to make sure everybody gets a chance to discuss these issues. and our conversation today is going to focus on three key issues. one, strengthening partnerships to leverage resources to better serve our vets; two, improving the means to identify and connect veterans to employment services and job opportunities; and, three, eliminating barriers to veteran employment. as we begin with our panelists, i would encourage my colleagues to jump in at any time to share inknow vasive practice -- innovative practicing or questions for these folks. start with a general question here about strengthening partnerships and leveraging resources. states are often in the best position to work with local communities, provide employment support services and engage with employers seeking to hire veterans. but to do so effectively required active partnership with the federal government and the private sector. first to our federal panelists, how can states best partner to address service members' transition and and other veterans employment challenges? >> all right. so i'll start, and thank you very much, governor nixon and governor branstad, for the opportunity. i think that you've really hit on something important here which is the partnership. and the department of labor be through its job center network, the 2500 job centers that are out there across the country, is uniquely positioned to help frame this partnership. i think i'd like to start with a couple of things. first w the national guard. we certainly recognize the significance of full employment opportunities and its relationship to the readiness of your national guard duty. we frequently talk about the fact that many guard and reservists are either un'em ploited, underemployed -- unemployed, underemployed -- [inaudible] job centers offer a great way to connect. and so what we are busy doing is trying to encourage our federally-funded state reps, the directors of veterans actives in each of your states to work very closely with your state work force agency to engage with -- [inaudible] to make sure that that relationship is strong so that we can connect the local job centers in and around your guard unit with the folks in those units to make sure that we know about them, that they're registered in the system and we can help with the matching opportunities. because as you all know, there are lots and lots of opportunities, and the challenge often is simply connecting that young guardsman to the opportunity that are out there. so we think that the work force system and the job centers that are there close by offer a great way to have individual counseling for that, for that guardsman or reservist in a direct connection through the state job banks, the job centers and that personal connection. so i think it's really important, and i would encourage you as you go back and talk to your labor commissioners that you hook them up with that -- [inaudible] who's there in your state to make sure that that partnership is strong. the next point be i would make is -- point i would make is regarding military installations. obviously, not every state has an active military installation, but where you do have those, we've worked very closely with dod to develop at the federal level memorandums of understanding that encourage military commanders to actively engage with their local work force agencies and centers to bring those folks onto the bases. and we are about to publish within dol guidance to those job center directors through your state work force agencies encouraging them to be available when that military installation commander calls. it's vital to enable what dod's got going on in terms of their transition assistance program in capstone, making sure those service members before they transition know about the job center resources. and i do want to make sure you all know that as a matter of dol policy any active duty service member who has separation orders and a separation date is considered a dislocated worker for the purposes of access within the job center network, the work force system and for access to work force integrated, work force innovation fund training. so service members with etf dates are eligible for wia. priority and access to those resources, and that's a critical way to help. >> is that automatic? >> it is automatic. it is a matter of public policy. it is in policy documents that the department of labor has issued going back to 2005, actually. i was very prize -- surprised it went that far. which also applies to spouses, both spouses of service members who are changing station and service members who are separating. so there's just a couple of things right off the top that demonstrate the critical partnership between dod, your guard and reserve units and the national work force system. >> if i might add -- >> [inaudible] jumping in, teresa, you said that our veterans are un'em ploited -- unemployed, underemployed or unhappily employed when they come home from service and transition into civilian life. and maybe it's a question for everybody, but why is that? what are the obstacles for them to be happily employed? what are the obstacles -- and why is anybody underemployed? what is the cause of that unemployment unhappiness? >> well, i suppose in many cases it's as unique as the individual, but often times i suspect it is based in the fact that may may jump -- they may jump into the first job that's available because they feel the need to find some employment. and then may have found a job that doesn't fit their skills, doesn't fit their interest be, momentum fit their aptitude. so we want to make sure that they know that the utility of the job centers and the counselors that are there to actually do skills assessment for them, figure out where the training gaps are, make sure they get the kind of guidance they need to find jobs that will, in fact, help them be happily employed with meaningful work. >> do we have a higher unemployment rate, and i expect we do, of veterans returning than we have in the general population? the general population is probably -- >> i think -- >> -- could be about the same. >> so i would point to a couple of statistics. first, the aggregate veterans unemployment rate has been below the national unemployment rate almost continuously for the last three years. but you have to keep in mind that the veteran population skews older or than the average demographic in america. in fact, 65% of the veterans in america are over the age of 45. and so unemployment tends to decrease as age increases, normally speaking. but then the post-9/11 vets, those recent separatees, do have a higher unemployment rate, but it is closing on the national average for the equivalent age groups. and, in fact, in may they were almost statistically equivalent. so it's closing. i think it has a lot to do with dod's efforts to introduce folks before separation to really critical thinking about their transition. and our partnership with dod to make sure that they have access to the resources that they need before they transition to develop the right kinds of skills and search techniques and identify opportunities. >> that's what i wanted to make sure everybody understood, so that we could structure this conversation, that the transition assistance program for our service members has gone through a significant redesign. and you see some of that literature in your notebooks that are at the table. but what we've done is we've worked with dol, we've worked with veterans affairs, each with department of education, small business administration and the office of personnel management and brought all of those summit matter experts -- subject matter experts together and really hammered out, first, what did we want as an end result with the transition preparation that we gave to service members? so what you have now is a set of career readiness standards that every service member needs to meet before they separate just like they meet the physical fitness, the military training, the equipment standards, all of that. they now have to meet career readiness standards. they are very basic. an example would be a 12-month certificate. so we get them to look at what they have coming in now, what are their expenses and move them to where do you think you're going to relocate to? and using some of dol's tools, taking them to that job market and finding out what does the labor market look like there, and what could they be earning? one of the other career readiness standards, and be i think this is critical so that you understand where we're going. one of the career readiness standards is an moc -- [inaudible] the military occupational code crosswalk so that they take their military occupational code, using dol's great web-based tools, translate those into the civilian occupational code, go to the labor market in the locations to which they think they are going to relocate and look at how if those skills are in demand in that labor market, a lot of times a lot of our service members are thinking i'm going to go back home. if the labor market does not have in demand the skills that every or that you want to have as a career, what's plan p? and often for our combat army folks plan b is that very generous post-9/11 g.i. bill which then connects them to another part of that curriculum which is accessing higher education which teaches them how to select the best state colleges, universities, community colleges to get the skills that they need for that, for that civilian occupation. or a career technical training track which teaches them all about the institutions that offer them the vocational training in your state, in your communities. and one of the correct -- what are the correct courses of studies that they can use the post-9/11 g.i. bill to cover and pay for. the curriculum, we've moved from a four-hour preseparation counseling to a mandatory 88 hours of instruction. brick ask mortar -- brick and mortar, virtual curriculum available to them. but to teach them far earlier, far earlier to start considering how they're going to use this riching set of skills and training that they get out of the military and apply those to their lives when they separate. and that's the culture change for dod. ask that articulates very clearly that everyone, whether you serve four years or you serve 40 years, whether you're a first termer or you're a fourth four-star, everyone, if all goes well, will separate from active duty. and how do you start making wise, informed decisions for you and your family now. to embed that kind of thinking, that moc crosswalk, that exercise be, we'll start at the first permanent duty station. excuse me, first permanent duty steation for every service member. so whereas we used to do all this preparation in the last 09 days of a -- 90 days of a military member be's career, we're embedding that across the life cycle. which means they are going to start looking at the afghanistan information about your state, your colleges, your universities, your technical training institutes, your labor markets very, very early on. and be also they'll be looking for those training opportunities that you'll be offering at your state, the careers that they want to have as a civilian. it's a completely different mindset, it's a completely -- it's a complete change in the system, and we're very much partnering with dol to get that earlier thinking and that longer-term thinking embedded across the, across all of the forces. so your not going to be -- you're not going to be seeing service members hurrying and scurrying at the last 90 days of their military service. starting in 2015, they will start -- those cohorts will start longer term process, this longer term thinking and deliberate planning. for now, yes, we have a lot of our service members coming back from iraq and and afghanistan, but they are already going through that training. and the capstone that ms. questionerton referred to -- gerton referred to is where commanders, a new responsibility, commanders have to insure that their members meet those career readiness standards. if they don't, they get a warm handover to the department of labor staff. they're your best connection to that labor force for them to be able to connect immediately to what the labor markets are in your community. a terrific asset for everyone. or they may get connect today to veterans affairs. in those regional hospitals, there's veterans centers. so it's very much a dovetailed curriculum, an inner agency effort. it's unprecedented. and there's a government structure to be overseeing that, that means monthly to be sharing information on all the perhapses and the implementation. so i wanted to offer that to you so that we're not set in the short thinking that short term we're going to be looking at more deliberate planning so that you can also be knowing that service members are going to be looking at your state much, much earlier. >> thank you, dr. kelly. clearly, a lot of work has been done at this, and we're at a point now where all of us are going to be in service in one form or another when we breakthrough the barrier, get that unemployment rate well below that of the normal population. one of the key parts of that is the state partners. we have two with us, iowa and missouri. also with you, debi. what is iowa doing to, you know, utilize partnerships and get the connections both between the employers as well as organizations as well as the families themselves? >> absolutely. well, first of all, let me just take from where you started, because i'm going to tell you how we're implementing just what you said in the state through home based iowa. home based iowa is a five-year initiation. we have a single site portal, if you will, that comes into work force development. work force development will do the first assessment, and what we're using is that crosswalk assessment to say, okay, this is what you did in the military, this is what it means in the marketplace as far as skill sets. then we put them through skills assessment. okay, here's what you came out, here's what you need, and then we connect them with those jobs in our state. so we're providing a very concierge service for them. the other thing we're doing is because this is a public/private partnership. we're going to spend $750,000 to a million dollars a year. as governor bran standard, that will finish branstad, that will rest in our organization. so we're working with those 25, if you will, top employers of the state that are taking, creating the same protocols for their hrd.. because what we've -- hr department. what we've realized is there is a disconnect between those departments and really trying to hire this population. so we are really trying to create this, if you will, continuum that's comprehensive and really is matching exactly what you are talking about. so then what we've done is taken it a step further and said, okay, so if we know this, let's drill down into the bases. we've done research to show every base in the country, basically, those military rankings and what that means to the marketplace, right, when you do that transitional software. we know you have one base that has an abundance of i.t., and we have to hire x amount of i.t.s because we've already predicted with the next five years of baby boomers exiting the marketplace, how many people we're going to need. jobs in two or three years from now when they're deblowing, and now we're actively reaching out to try the touch those individuals before they ever think of saying here's where you need to go. as the governor said, we're doing this the state due -- in-state tuition, and we're about the whole family. so all of the services that we're providing that we're talking about for that military vet we're also applying to their family members. so we're taking exactly the foundation that you have laid for us, and we're actually implementing it into the marketplace. >> well, governor, as you know, our show me heroes program in missouri was started this 2010, and it really is a very basic concept, and that is to link veterans to give them a chance at employment once they leave military service. as the governor mentioned, we believe it's within successful. 4,000 employers have taken the pledge, and as of last friday 6, 836 military veterans d6,836 military veterans are now gainfully employed in the civilian sector since the insense of this program of -- inception of this program. if i were another governor in another state and if i were looking at how to design a successful program, i think there are really two basic concepts. again, our program is pretty straightforward. an employer takes a pledge, signs a pledge -- can do it electronically -- to give a veteran a shot at an employment opportunity. in turn, of course, that person gets a person who is trained to standard, mission-oriented, goal-focused and certainly knows how to work as a team member. the two basic reasons why we believe this ram has been successful -- program has been successful are we kept it simple. it's not complicated. an employer signs a pledge that that employer will give that veteran a shot. we have not added an additional byzantine bureaucracy around this program. it's a single point of contact to the show me heroes program. we have a director, a web site and everything works up to and through that director. as we've heard, there already is an existing apparatus out there. we didn't believe it was in our best interests to add to, to make it any more complicated, but to make it simple and to achieve our goals. the second thing that we have done -- and, again, i think this is the other reason that it's been a successful program -- is that we have utilized existing resources that are out there. one of the folks mentioned the levers, which is an acronym for local veterans employment representatives. we have 14 of those across the state of missouri. they're in direct contact with employers, they're in direct contact with military veterans, and we work with them, complement their efforts. and, again, use their information, follow up to the top, to the show me heroes program with the ultimate goal, and we like our success rate. with the ultimate goal of giving that veteran the opportunity to succeed and giving that employer, like the two that are with us here today -- express scrips and enterprise -- an employee who's skilled and is going to make their company even better. >> [inaudible] let's move to those employers real quickly. and then we'll open up again. we have with us, as i said before, representatives of both express scripts and enterprise, two significant companies that were already doing a lot in this area, have really embraced these programs, and i'd like to let them tell a little bit about both their experience here and what advice they would have to us and the government, but equally importantly, to other employers out there, what they have discovers -- discovered from embracing this. and i would also say these have been two of the organizations in our state that have been incredibly involved at every level to assist folks that are transitioning out of the military to get into the economic sector. we'll start with the express scripts gentleman. >> certainly. thank you very much, gentleman. and like i said before the panel, you made my mother's day, that she can see me on c-span today. [laughter] >> saturday afternoon audience, c-span, i mean, it spikes to -- [laughter] unknown levels as she joins the two librarians in boise. [laughter] watchers this afternoon, but hello, mom. okay, all yours. >> she may, in fact, be disappointed that i didn't win the naming contest though, so we can revisit that later. i do want to talk about some of the partnerships express scripts has built both at the federal and state level and give some of the measures of success and things that we've learned through this process. express scripts has been committed to hiring veterans since we began as a company in the mid 1980s. now, what that meant in the 1980s was visiting military installations in missouri and across the river in illinois, participating in, you know, mock interviews and transition assistance programs. but people seek employment so differently today than they did then. so those programs have changed, and we do more things on the internet, and we do more things through social media in order to connect with these groups. four organizations in particular that we've had successful partnerships, our start with show me heros, and jeff really did make it sound so simple, but it's the similar simplicity of g employers to make a promise and make a commitment. and it's a public commitment that has really driven its success. and signed on is how we think about it. we've added 300 veterans to our employment, or to our operations this in st. louis, missouri. a few other organizationses, the military spouses -- organizations, the military spouses' imemployment partnership. this is a department of defense program that allows for the better facilitation of job postings and listings to be shared with people who are actively seeking employment. this is what i mean by using different technology to get these opportunities in front of current active job seekers. the 100,000 jobs mission which we've been involved in and helped chair some of the health care task force or helped convene them, you know, within three years they exceeded the mission. it has been a really successful organization in that way. and then the employer support of the guard and reserves, really focusing on reservists. but those are all external partners to express scripts, and where i think we've had the most success is actually building a partnership with our work force, and here's what i mean. i think when you recruit and hire veteran employees, you obviously want to retain that employee as well. so being committed to veterans isn't a recruitment issue. it's, in fact, a cultural issue for the entire enterprise years later. hopefully, years later. so we have some reservists in our company who were sent overseas, both to afghanistan -- one in 2012 and one last year -- and working with them, we actually decided to sort of live blog would be the wrong word, but through the use of our intrabe net, allow them to write posts for the work force to see, sharing what was going on in afghanistan. one being a reservist who was at a forward operations base, one a marine who was actually working to stand up the afghan national army. right? so our work force of more than 30,000 nationwide were able to see and read about and see photographs of and what does this mean? and so it builds a really patriotic feeling inside the company about the work force and that commitment and that, you know, express scripts is meeting all of its obligations and supporting our reservist employees. it also serves to increase the ability of how important it is to disclose veteran status because there are critical measurement problems -- i mean, all of us in the room, you know, you may not go back and update your profile in your hr system after the day you're hired. and perhaps you didn't disclose you were a veteran on day one because you didn't want to or you thought there may be a bias or there was an error. and so you may have been with your company for ten years, and they would never know that you were a veteran. but when you do high profile things and share with your work force that you are committed and here's what you're doing and you want employees to see it, they start disclosing, and they start sharing. it helps solve for one of the sort of pit that'lls that e with -- pitfalls that we've seen. >> well, thank you, governor, and it's a pleasure to be here representing our state, and can't thank you enough for your leadership in this area. i'm going to talk about simplicity and complicity. i think we've heard that already, and i say that because i'm not going to tell you anything you necessarily haven't heard yet, with but there's a really clear message in that. because simplicity, when it comes to the issue of employing people, is vitally important. there are a lot of institutions, a lot of employers, a lot of methodologies of trying to find employment opportunities for our veterans, and if we overcomplicate things, connections are lost. so the more simple we can keep it, the better it's going to be. a few areas where we have found tremendous success are the following. the first is the 100,000 jobs mission. as jonah had indicated, this is a large organization. it's over 160 private employers. we get together on a quarterly basis, and we have the opportunity to share best practices about thing that have worked for us, things maybe we're struggling with and looking for ideas about how we can implement success stories that they have achieved. as jonah indicated, they surpassed the first goal, and they're well on their way to their second goal. their current goal is to hire 900,000 veterans -- 200,000 veterans by the end of 2020, and at the end of q1 of 2014, they've hired over 140,000 veterans. the simplicity of idea sharing, of identifying the resources where successful employers are finding those candidates is an easy place to begin. the second is also the pride of our show me heroes program. and, again, thank you for your leadership, governor. because the simplicity there has been great. when you make a commitment to hire veterans, it's not just signing your name on the dotted line, it's a commitment to your efforts and your activities on a daily basis. if it's not truly woven into the culture and the fabric of who you are as an organization, it'll come and go as our recruiting trends and fads do on a regular basis. a company our size of over 66,000 u.s. employees, we have a constant need to hire individuals. and today we have about 10% of our work force that are veterans. and we're looking to improve and increase that in programs like heroes show me program is vitally important to us in being able to exceed the goals that we have. so, again, thank you for your leadership there. .. post them on popular internet sites you are familiar with, the googles, the simply hired. in addition to those large sites, they also post on over 1000 unique sites that are attracting individuals under topics like diversity, military, veterans, state workforce centers and the like. we are trying to attack this from a national scale of the more popular specs, and the unique sites that somebody may not be familiar with unless you are part of that the citigroup. those two approaches have yielded a tremendous amount of success for us. specifically for veterans, we partner with 12 unique veteran sites, where we post all of our opportunities. recruit military.com and that success. -- v we were founded by a decorated naval fighter pilot in world war ii. he flew off the u.s. enterprise hence the name enterprise. when you have a name like that, your commitment can't be to come to something like this today and talk about it. it's about the relationships we establish in the action plans we put in place. any active service member called to duty enterprise stands up and pay the salary differential while they are in service of their family awithher family ato make ends meet doesn't have to suffer there is a differential pay that will be reduced. so our commitment goes beyond what we talked about when it comes to hiring veterans. i'm looking forward to sharing ideas. thank you. >> this panel has it from the beginning to the end of with this for just a second and talk about some impediments with the success we've seen in the realignment of the coordination. one of the things we've seen from the state is that often times folks will serve in the military and live five, six, eight, nine or ten different places and you think coming home is not necessarily you go to where the jobs are so it is a national search is sometimes for folks in consequentially we ran into some mechanical issues when you have someone that served in the number of places going up to where they were born but instead of going where the opportunity is it's one of the challenges we have things to work through. but i would ask each of you but sort of challenges exist out there understanding that once again to make sure everybody serves the country and has an opportunity to continue to evolve themselves and be economically independent and we feel a broad responsibility within all volunteer service especially in a time of war over the last 12 years and we've made significant progress and want to continue to accelerate that such data as in the future as a country we try to meet recruitment goals folks can understand with the service comes an opportunity. after the service and use it here today with continuing impediments to uc and what advice do you have to the governor and others about what the punch list should be for us to continue to move forward. doctor kelly. >> i think one of the most effective steps you can take and we can look at to recognize and acknowledge the military training that the service servis go through and the skills that they earned during their active duty and to recognize those in the certification for different job skills to also recognize that sometimes the colleges and universities, technical training institutions don't recognize that training in the coursework or in the credits that they gave to the servicemembers when they are coming to the post-9/11 g.i. bill and to perhaps reconsider that. sometimes there is a small gap in the skills and we all take a corman and the medics and a perfect example we are looking to fill the gap for health care. in our servicemembers and corman that have significant experience in the field and who have gained significant skills as first responders, etc. when they do return to the estate that experience isn't recognized and they have to go back and fill the gaps even though they might be small gaps in some of the skills so that the credentialing and the coursework into the certification of the universities or the different associations require and if you could please look at that and acknowledge and recognize and give credit for those levels of skills that our servicemembers have and i think the national governors association is actually working on this to expand that recognition and acknowledgment. the other thing that i would tell you is that it's been highlighted very quickly that there are websites for servicemembers to go to to find jobs, and that's been one of their concerns to us and also from veterans is there are so many websites out there that they are confused about which ones are reputable and which ones can lead to a good job. so if the federal effort now to develop one single portal to direct the servicemembers and veterans to words with number one, translates the skills and to find employment so we are currently working on refining the veterans employment center which will be based on the benefits portal of the veterans affairs and we are engaged in that with a very strong effort in the department of labor trying to bring that to permission. our members are very confused about those. so i would tell you that if we are going to have the curriculum you may want to look at having the best use of data center and become users of the portal. >> do you want to answer that? the neck since we are talking military identity of the biggest challenge that we find if there is a tremendous corporate but a lot of times we have trouble translating the corporate strategy into the hiring tactics and that is what put a tremendous emphasis on over the last couple of years. obviously enterprise and express group figured it out, but a lot of companies haven't, and so we take a lot of time to work with especially nationwide companies were regional companies and actually walk them through the process of saying i want to hire vets to actually get them hired and that means figuring out for the local hiring managers are unaware of the opportunities are in the prescriptions that his military skills and connecting them through the job centers for the local veteran population and a prescreening introducing people to each other and then making sure that the hiring happens. so i think one of the big pieces is getting from the strategy to tactics in this game and a long with that goes a companion issue people say i want to hire veterans. the total set of descriptions get back to one veteran that fits the skill. i had one corporate, the one financial corporation tony i like to hire veterans with cpa. that's interesting. we don't have a lot of veterans with cpas and those that we do have are not unemployed. but there is typically a tight description around the technical skills and as doctor kelly said, the dod is doing a lot to help them track the growth in the skills to be enrolled in programs while they are on active duty but typically they are going to separate without having final credentials. we have the priority service for all of the funding programs for the workforce innovation opportunity act. use that and the individual training accounts to fill the gap for them because a lot of corporations are not willing to grant that training. you have to grant that you can use to produce the skills training. it's just to figure out the certification and technical training that will enable them to move into the kind of great entry level middle class jobs. >> if i can pick up on what doctor kelly said as part of our company and its legislative package we are dealing with the streamlining of all of the licensing and credentialing and infected the governor has given a directive to all of the licensing boards and commissions that they have to have a plan into us by the end of december of how they are going to make that work. we are looking at apprenticeships in the broad context we are looking at manufacturing and it and working with trade groups to expedite their apprenticeship programs to say how are you because if someone comes up and they are doing electrical work in the military they shouldn't have to go through a five-year process and trade unions. and so, we are working in partnership with them to make sure that they are also doing that. so, we feel really good about that connection that we are making. >> i would just let you know there's about $100 million of grants scheduled for the first quarter. >> we are going after another 12. [laughter] >> would you like to write us a letter of reference. >> we focus on the apprenticeship, yes. >> governor, when it comes to military veterans and some of the challenges i think we've probably all heard that in some place that they are getting the civilian employment, and we try to address that through legislation since you have been in office. one is the licensure issue and in missouri we now have a long list we passed in 2013. that says if the licensing board approves it, then a military veteran gets credit towards the licensure for the work for work related to that professional occupation during military service. we also have a law in missouri that provides for temporary licensure for the relocated spouse of an active duty military member and that is the way that we feel like we can support military families and what they do when they relocate to our state to help the spouse smooth the transition back to missouri. we also passed a law in missouri that allows for the standards and military veteran to apply towards college credit a college degree training education if the veteran has received in the military. as we have attempted to address some of the impediments to civilian employment through these measures. i would add one other thing i think we have benefited with the centralized command structure of the national guard appointed by the governor there is an in-state command structure and in fact the director of the program we had one and then we have another now and if they thy were both national guard members. an easy way to reach out to those folks when they are not deployed. likewise we have military installations in the state of missouri and so it's easy to get to the basis and make sure that folks are aware of the show me heroes program and to find the reservists, the recently separated reserve to locate them and match them with employers like enterprise and express groups. if we are not able to come up and just relative to the national guard and active duty veterans it's just been more difficult. i think that we have all accepted to try harder and work with our veterans organizations even more we are talking about those reservists. you may have a commander of the reserve unit in missouri that is a nevada for example. it just makes it a little more challenging to bring the reservists into the show me he rose program. >> i appreciate the opportunity to be here today. working with our soldiers and veterans into the private sector this is more you got my attention on the hundred million dollars and we have been doing a lot of resources and perhaps being nevada we have seen what happened in the goodwill. but is there a place we can go to see where those requirements are and to see what opportunities are there? because i really would like to use that as a multiplier to what we are doing in my state. >> absolutely. looking under the employment training agency most of these grants are coming out through them and that is sort of a very small little brother to the organization that they are the ones putting out all of these grants and the national emergency grants. in 2015 we also put out job training grants so this is just the beginning of 2015 and because it is on the president's agenda the office is getting a report on how the administration is doing on training and it's going to continue to get the kind of funding needed to. >> we are all trying to do what we have been talking about and i love in the competition in the case i want to be the most veteran friendly states in the country and so do you and everybody else. but that benefit is for one very important group. so i look forward to having another conversation with you and following up. >> thank you. >> if i could give you a sense about these workers, are there specific issues with them especially now that we are making some progress and making it smoother for the unemployed as well as family issues and what not what have you all found in your organizations about the veterans that work for you? as anything stand out in particular either traced were challenges were things that we should all be aware of that are unique or at least in the transitional phase of these workers? >> thank you governor. we have not which isn't to say we don't recognize that they don't or couldn't exist. what we are doing is creating a veterans employee resource group to let them identify the network with each other and share the concerns collaboratively across the entire enterprise because i don't know that anyone sitting in an office or corporate headquarters could say categorically that there were not unique issues here that they could or could not see them and so we want to empower employees to do this themselves. >> the first answer is what i was seeking and true there are a number of employers with posttraumatic stress syndrome concerned about a number of issues that get a lot of attention and rightfully so the bottom line is in your experience you found these to be great resources. i just think as it was mentioned before and we tried to take the significant progress of the larger employers and filter that down into one or two-person employment opportunities and whatnot it's important to break through the barriers and the public. is there anything about the workers you have seen? is there anything about these particular workers? >> one of the primary reasons we are so interested in hiring veterans is because they bring a level of loyalty and commitment, dedication, teamwork, strong work ethic that helps the success of the organization and the employees understand there's a hierarchy in the company and we have individuals that come in and work in a variety of capacities. we have positions that require a four year degree and that do not require degrees or any formal education in high school at all so we are able to provide them opportunities regardless because the skills that can be taught and one of the things we are known for having organization is having a very strong program so whether you or someone on the counter assisting someone to write a contract or for someone who is moving vehicles across the state or in the administrative capacity helping behind the scenes call centers and what have you, we provide all that training but again i go back to the strong work ethic and the loyalty and commitment those are powerful things we can capitalize on to what we have found is that in a very positive result. i'm not saying we don't occasionally come across a challenging situation when you have over 6600 veterans will find avocational challenge that we are committed to working in those challenges and we have benefit programs to support our employees we are in the long haul and understand the value to them and to us. >> there has been a great deal of attention the last months of the challenge to the va and once again, the state writes what they want and we are all concerned to make sure any agencies -- i would argue that in this area folks have kept their eyes on the ball pretty closely the last four or five years at the state level, private sector and federal lev level. as we come into the final committee hearing i would like to go through the panel and see if there is any positive final point that you would like to make because we beat leave the other thing the numbers are going to get bigger if the military downside with your going to see is a push. said to have a structure that is a little bit bigger in the short run is very important as far as over the next year or two years or three years you see both the war is coming to an end and the forces are drawn down as well as the entire size of the force strength in the entirety so the demand is going to get larger. give us a second as we go one more time for the panel the positive things that you think you are accomplishing and having practical effects for families, businesses and communities around the country. >> on a piece of good news while many programs and the government are experiencing reduced funding some of the veterans program that has actually had increased funding the last two years and that means we are pushing increased funding for the state and the jobs grant we have a 15% increase in 2014 and we pushed that out to you for the purpose of hiring additional outreach programs. so we want to make sure that you know that you've got more money and that you are hiring them and putting them in the places geographically where the veteran population is concentrated. these are the folks the individual case management for the veterans of the job centers who need extra help and who may have significant barriers to employment and are the ones that can actually walk through. as an example, in florida you may be familiar with the company allied barton. they d do a lot of security contracts. they have a tremendous commitment to hiring veterans and they've been working with us in the job centers for years. it's now so great that they are reaching out to the homeless veterans grants team and making specific efforts to hire homeless veterans into their security guard program. so, this partnership works. we know that it works and there is a great example of a company now that is so comfortable using the job centers to staff the veterans objective that they are going beyond that now and reaching the special needs populations. as it is a tremendous opportunity and we are happy to export the practice. >> the good news on our end is that we have and agency partners on the federal level that is actually working. we came together and we decided what it was that we needed to do. we had committed resources staffing millions of dollars to the program and the new curriculum as well as getting staff on the installation and in the communities to address the needs of the transitioning service members speak of the pieces of the curriculum together that we did the service members to your community. we focus on the principle that you can go back to the community and we are bridging the bad and we are doing that by bringing them to the department of labor, to the va as well as to the schools cut the university, the career technical training institutions in your state and letting them decide what is the best course of action for them. one thing i want to highlight is that while we are focused on the iraq and afghanistan population of the service members coming back right now, i want you to be aware that nearly 200,000 service members separate every year. every year from the department of defense. >> 200,000 clicks >> yes. that is business as usual. 70% of the marines serve one term come up for years and they turned it over every year. over half of our own soldiers serve one term. so that you can compete in the national economy, the international economy this occupation has already shown they are trainable and they survived basic training. he survived the academy. they are highly trained and you have a handout in your notebook. of the military training and you call it a case leadership organization, decision making, problem solving, teamwork and team building. they are coming back to the communities. this is a talent pipeline that is institutionalized year after year after year. so they are there and ready for you you just have t and you juse the training opportunities for your state identifiable by them. just as iowa and the other states have done. there's lots of good work going on. in fact, we have the chairman and is about to publish a bunch of best practices state-by-state. your colleagues are all in a very creative and innovative in bringing best practices to the floor. but it meets the needs of their communities. it cannot be one-size-fits-all. in the pipeline this nation has it and it is in the transition service. >> 200,000 a year. >> they are putting veterans on the path to career success as a mission that is embraced by your entire enterprise. it is a mission embraced by the entire statewide enterprise and i would like to close with our home base iowa pledge much like you have the missouri pledge but we also have home-based iowa communities that i want to tell you an example of what they are going to go on and about the legislative package that we passed creative but don't you position for the recruitment of the veterans. greene county that is the first county is getting a 2,000-dollar relocation support package towards anyone moving in their county. 100% three-year property tax abatement, families purchasing a home and they are also in the county didn't even got together and said we are going to eliminate the closing costs for veterans applying for va financing. what we are trying to do is create an environment to say the only limit on being a home-based community is your self so use your imagination, partner with the state and make sure that this is a state wide initiative that is embraced from the top down from our executive all the way to the communities. >> good news for the veterans business is based on the conversation that you had in the middle east you came back and shared that conversation. we went to work four years later over 4,000 employers have signed up to be show me heroes and wires and employers and i can'ts enough 6,036 veterans have jobs in the civilian sector since we started that program. it's very moving to me personally to think about that and your dedication to achieving that goal. we have been successful again because we granted the program with the name we are the show me state. these people are heroes. show me heroes. we kept it simple for several employers and veterans as i commented earlier. i think we've done a good job of communicating with employers and i cannot emphasize enough. it's also important for us to track the progress of both the veterans who were seeking an appointment but also employers. after they take the pledge to continue to monitor their progress and to stay in touch with them and to offer that one-stop shop for them if they have any questions. and as a result, as i said, all these veterans who are employed hiand i'm not just large employs but the great corporate citizen that are here with us today but also small employers. mom and pop businesses have taken the show me heroes pledge, and you can see the results. >> we will finish here. from your organization and is just mentioned the smaller organizations what can you do with corporate leaders that have been successful in your organizations embracing this to lead other organizations what confidence can you give them or what best practices that you've learned or what advice would you have two other organizations out there not only in the states here, but obviously across the country? >> certainly the advice that we would have is really three-pronged. the one earlier had to do with measurement and the self identification of the veterans. to expect the low disclosure rates either because of understanding the tools, not wanting to share that information but always a challenge. the second one or the second recommendation would be that not every partner out there that can work claims to help you with better in hiring is someone to do business with. you need to choose part or is carefully. and i think that there is probably more information sharing that could and should be going on there. and third, everything that we are talking about here is not going to happen overnight. and the companies that have been committed to veterans for decades or even since before their inception are going to be at a different place than someone that wants to get started. so, i think that there's a flexibility invitations -- and patients that the sector ought to have. i would like to comment on that last question though because they really liked it. i think what you were getting at, governor, it's not news that the federal and state governments don't have a lot of money to put into these things. what could they do that would be really impactful to veteran hiring programs? and i -- there's something that's nearly free, and its recognition. it's -- and i don't say this enough in a self-congratulatory way the show me heroes just express the flag of freedom. we are very proud of this in happy for that. the benefit of that award though doesn't accrue to express groups. it's the community that hears about it and putting our includk force and people around us across the state who learn that there is a company committed to doing this, and the state is committed to doing this. it's raising awareness there. lastly, something about the governor touchethat thegovernors that competition. express scripts got the flag of freedom award someone else didn't. so why do they need to do to get it collects its social warming. it's the same reason my neighbor bought four boxes of girl scout cookies i'm going to buy five. we just want to be able to one up one another. and so, we can compete in states. we should be competing as private-sector employees who don't even do the same thing, but because there is recognition on the table, and like i said it's nearly free. >> so what a great place to end because the folks from enterprise about nine and a half months before you all did -- [laughter] >> quite frankly i know the leadership of the organizations talk to each other and quite frankly it is at the meeting they were talking about it and it's the kind of thing that resonates through a deep sense of competitiveness and both organizations. it's actually my fault. but bring us to the finish line on the panel if you would about what sort of summations or ideas you might have. >> the first question asked was about positives, and i think the greatest positive i can take away from our effort is that there is a strong willingness everywhere that we go. when we have 175 town acquisition professionals across the u.s. trying to accomplish the same thing a lot of experiences occurred. the consistent experience we find is that the doors are open. i will give you a great example. last thursday i was in cleveland and one of my hr professionals went and visited the va medical center. that is the third largest center in the u.s.. three individuals in the center are all working hard to find employment opportunities for veterans and we got them together and shared a variety of ideas about what we could do and what they didn't realize is that they were doing different things trying to get to the same place. so what we have done is we've offered to coordinate efforts and involving other community organizations to be a part of the simple things like how can we as employers help the veterans be prepared to help transitional services. we can go out and help with things like developing resumes, mock interviews, negotiating salaries, the transferable skills that they are going to need just to get a job, and the willingness and excitement that those individuals share across the table is empowering. it got robert and myself excited that not only can we make a difference in at one location that i can share that story with people like everybody in the room the willingness is really strong and exciting and i think that is the greatest thing we can continue to collaborate the forms like this and share information across the organizations like the 100,000 jobs mission and the show me heroes program we get these employers together with the resources and great things will continue to happen and are happening. [applause] we have a little bit of kennedy business and we will get done quicker that while we are here we would like to get that done. we have a couple of reports. if martin simon from the center for best practices and david from the director of policy. martin first? >> thank you, governor. i just want to provide a quick overview of a project n. g. a is implemented in on the veteran licensing and certification of the policy academy. it is supported by the department of labor training administration and the veterans employment training service. if in partnership with the department of defense and the veterans administration. both terry and susan kelly have been fighting their expertise in support of the project. it was authorized under the veterans opportunity to work act that was passed in 2011. and the nga center is assisting the sixth state. two of them here today with iowa and nevada are part of the projecproject in creating and excreting pathways to the licensure and certification for the veterans and service members with relevant employment or military training experience and high demand occupations. the other states are illinois, minnesota, virginia and wisconsin. the department of defense carried out a similar effort prior to those in which they identified ten occupational areas at a high likelihood of having the transferability between the skill sets gained in the military and civilian the cn workforce, and we were asked to choose from that list of the occupational areas to focus on in this project of the four or five areas and then the states were asked to choose free occupational areas as part of that. so the states are focusing on the commercial drivers licenses and the emergency medical technician and paramedics practical nurses, registered nurses, physical therapy assistants and police patrol officers. those are the occupational areas. each of the states were asked to focus on an area where they saw growth in their states or the need in their state and where there was a likelihood that these -- the state's teams are appointed by the governor in the state are to remove red tape and duplication across the programs to reduce unemployment veterans to increase the secondary and associated costs those are the primary object ends of this initiative. the project started in may of 2013 and it will conclude in may of 2015 and one of the major products will be a blueprint based on successful strategies for the states are implementing as well as the cost study that is an important part of looking at what are the costs that can be saved by accelerating the process to the licensure and credentials. there are a couple of areas the states have identified that i think are worth noting. probably the largest one is getting the systems servicing the veterans to share information to be able to identify first starting with the discharge of papers that are believed to veterans receive and are given over to the veterans of their offices in the state trade for the most part, those are hard copy and are not digitized, and it's often very difficult to be able to compare information that's available in those discharge figures. for example, the military occupational specialties of and personal information. there are privacy constraints across all the different types of programs. succumb in the six states they are all working to try to integrate across the data systems, first starting with those discharge papers that a veteran is receiving unemployment insurance to be able to get those systems to talk to each other and then you have the educational institutions that have their own record-keeping process. so that's probably been the number one challenge that the states have identified because it is hard to identify for the unemployed veterans are in a state and even where states, you know, iowa and nevada and missouri where you are doing work in this area over the past few years that barrier still exists. and so i think that if there is a way to bring together those systems and integrate the systems that will be a major steps toward improving the services. the second barrier is getting the postsecondary institutions to put up bridge programs that will allow the military experience to be recognized in any of the training and education that was received in the military to be recognized so that programs can be shortened for these veterans and again that is a major focus of this initiative is resistance by community colleges which are the main educational institutions that are working in this area. part of the problem is the concern that there will not be enough demand for a program once it is put up. the other is there is a lot of complexity tied to the data sharing that i talked about. another area is with raising awareness among the licensing boards. this is a particular concern in the gulf area and cause of concern making sure the quality standards are met so loosening the requirements may lower the quality standards and in the medical area that is a major concern. and it's also looking at different options for the training programs. apprenticeship is one. there is resistance. i know in iowa you are trying to increase them across different occupations of the veterans have greater access but it is raising awareness with the licensing board and then the fourth one is measuring cost. it's very difficult to be able to identify where there can be cost savings or where there are duplicate of costs in the systems of those are the major challenges the states have identified. i'm going to stop there because the governors have already talked about some of the education that you have in the states. i could go on but i will turn it over to you. i will be brief. this is a great session. we are privileged to serve on the department of labor advisory committee so we are able to take a lot of the states innovation straight into the department of labor and the administration. in the relations context this isn't about legislation this is about working together and the department of defense, labor, department of education at the federal level they are working hard to break down their silos just as the states have done and from the state standpoint it's about us telling the story that you all were telling here and making sure that translates at the federal level and making sure all these pieces fit together so that is the work we are doing it the most important thing over the next six months is how we build a center for best practices and the office of the federal relations is going to do a survey of the states and benefits are being provided to try to get some regulatory of the programs and put them in one place so the federal partners happen and the state partners have been and the business industry has done so we can start bringing this together because everybody is interested. this is a win-win when it is done correctly and information is king to the advocacy will be about putting that information together so that we can act. >> thank you. we appreciate everybody's efforts and should also note we are getting done early unless you want to -- okay. governor on behalf of mga we think the panel for being here and on the states represented we do the best practices as well as the policy side and we share this to make sure each state is competing with each other in these important policy areas or he is successfully competing. this is a small area demand is high into the challenge is real with success is measurable and real for the families involved in the countries on behalf of the national governors association thank you for your involvement today. [applause] [inaudible conversations] just one of the sessions from this years summer meeting. you can find more online. check the video library at c-span.org. we are moving to a discussion with former vice president dick cheney and his family. this is a politico breakfast. he will be joined by his wife lynn and daughter liz and mike allen will be moderating. possible topics will include at ththeborder crisis and unaccompd minors as well as the israeli-palestinian conflict in the upcoming elections. all of that is scheduled to begin shortly as we wait for the politico playbook to begin. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] .. >> a possible final vote on that. >> the senate tomorrow at 3:00 eastern. and the house are in right now, at noon eastern time, 2:00 they'll begin legislative business. they'll be working on 20 wills today under suspension of the bills in the house including one to reauthorize or wind storm research and another to name an arizona ohs office for the late senator barry goldwater on the 50th anniversary of his winning the nomination for vice president. dick cheney and his wife, lynne, daughter liz, to hold a discussion with politico chief white house correspondent mike allen. ♪ ♪ knox, no. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> and this morning the politico playbook breakfast about to begin shortly, and we'll be with hearing this morning from former vice president dick cheney and his family, his wife lynne, his daughter liz. they'll touch on topics like the border crisis and the upcoming midterm elections. we'll with hearing from them shortly here at the lit coe playbook -- lit coe playbook -- politico laybook breakfast. >> ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. the program will begin momentarily. ♪ ♪ [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> and here on c-span2 waiting for the politico playbook breakfast to begin. we'll be hearing from former vice president dick cheney as well as his wife lynne and his daughter liz. they'll be talking with the chief politico white house correspondent, mike allen. he'll be moderating a conversation with them including the upcoming midterm elections. while we wait for this politico playbook to begin, we're going to take a look at what to expect in the week ahead in congress. we'll be back here as soon as the discussion begins at politico shortly. >> host: a little bit more context on what's going on on capitol hill is ian swanson, news editor at "the hill" newspaper. thanks for being with us, ian. >> guest: thanks for having me. >> host: we've been talking about the republican lawsuit against president barack obama. walk us through that a little bit and what action we could see soon, even this week. >> guest: sure. what we'll see, we believe on wednesday, is that the house rules committee will vote on whether to move forward with the lawsuit. we fully expect that to happen. the rules committee is dominated by republicans. that will bring the lawsuit to the floor. i'm not sure that we'll get a vote on the floor this week on the lawsuit. that could happen, but certainly, within the last three weeks that congress will be in before the august recess we're going to see the house vote on whether to go forward with the lawsuit and, again, we fully expect them to vote to move forward with the lawsuit because the house has a heart of republicans. >> host: from your perspective, are republicans united on this lawsuit? are there any dissenters who say maybe this isn't the right way to go? >> guest: i think republicans are pretty united about it. i think there's a couple of things going on, lana. you do have a division among republicans over whether the president should be impeached. there are some republicans that want to go that far, many more who don't, who think that would be something that isn't worth doing at all because it would go nowhere, and they think it could also bounce back and hurt them politically. so some people see this lawsuit as a way to sort of contain that fire for impeachment that could actually, you you know, maybe backfire and rutter he runs ahead of the -- hurt republicans ahead of the midterm elections. there's also a lot of general anger at the president among the republican party, and this is a way of sort of answering that anger with some kind of an action that will say, hey, we're trying to do something about this. >> host: another topic certainly in the news and on the minds of congress is this idea that emergency supplementary funding to address the border crisis. people on both sides of the aisle talking about that. what are we likely to see there? >> guest: that's another huge story of july that we'll be covering. the question is whether congress can get that supplemental to the president's desk before they all leave town for the august recess. i think there's a lot of hot vegas for both sides -- a lot of motivation for both sides to get something done before they leave, but there's really significant differences between democrats and republicans over how that package should look. and the big thing is whether you're going to change the law so that it's harder for people who are coming into the country from central american countries to get these automatic asylum hearings. there's a law that they changed in 2008 that's really leading to a lot of people crossing the border right now. and democrats and republicans disagree on how much you should change that law to try to prevent more people there trying to come into the united states. >> host: and then what about the highway trust fund deal? a lot of outrage, certainly, from governors at the national governors association heating who are very -- meeting who are very worried congress won't reach a deal. do you see one p in sight? >> yes. in fact, at the end of last week it looked like the house and senate were coming really, really close on a deal that will provide some -- [applause] >> welcome. welcome to the first standing room only playbook be lunch. thank all of you who came out, got away from work, especially thank all of you who are up there and "the politico" event staff which put on this amazing event. we're excited today to be hosting three cheneys, and even though we say cheney, they see cheney. so we have three cheneys, whatever you want to call them, lynne, dick and liz. they'll be out here momentarily. first, i'd like to thank the bank of america for making this probable. bank of america, which is sponsored, it gives us the chance to talk about the most important issues of the day with the most interesting people of the day. ask here to say a -- and here to say a few words is bank of america's corporate responsibility and consumer policy executive andrew. andrew? [applause] thank you for being here. >> great to be here. thank you very much. it's always nice to get alauded. we appreciate it, and we have been thrilled to do this partnership with politico for the past four years on a monthly basis. we have conversations in sober and substantive dialogue about important issues of the day, and we can't think of any better contribution to make to the political discourse than to have mike allen conduct these interviews, and it's just been a great partnership, and we're happy to be here. thanks, mike. >> thanks for making this possible. [applause] i'd also like to thank all of you in live stream land and, please, send us your questions. if you hashtag them, playbooklunch, i'll get them up here. also i think some of you got cards on the way in which will be handed to me if you have a question. and with that, i'd like to welcome the vice president, dr. cheney and liz cheney. [applause] thank you so much for doing this. thank you for doing this. thank you for being here. appreciate i. -- appreciate it. [applause] thank you very much for joining us, mr. vice president. you draw quite a crowd. [laughter] >> what makes you think it's him? [laughter] >> >> so a month ahead, on august 29th the cheneys will be celebrating 50 years of marriage, and -- [applause] and when we were backstage, mrs. cheney said, okay, if we're to come out here and have a family squabble, that would be your dream. [laughter] absolutely. so we'll see how i do with the family squabble. we're going to start here with a question from marching relate carlson. -- margaret carlson. she always knows the right thing to ask. i'm going to have each of you chime in on this, and then i'm going to plunge in. are you more like the bushes who didn't discuss politics at dinner or more like the kennedys who always did? >> when the family is alone, liz and mary and lynne and i, we usually end up telling old war stories about campaigns we were involved in, and it's always funny, it always involves train wrecks. the funniest political stories are train wrecks, and we had a lot of train wrecks along the way. >> ms. cheney? >> well, no, that's a good description. i think that the level of enthusiasm for political life, you know, varies. when dick was asked to be vice president, he thought that was great idea. i was -- [laughter] i was not so sure, you know? give up your job, give up your house and move. we weren't dead broke, excuse me. [laughter] but liz and mary was even her reluctant than i, but liz, we like to joke, was out in the backyard painting yard signs. so our level for involvement in politics varies. >> any actual fights? >> oh, sure. none we're going to talk about today, mike. [laughter] no, but i want to say seriously, though, it's a real tribute to my mom and dad that we did talk politics at the dinner table. we talked about what was happening in the world, we talked about what was happening on the news, and they treated marie and he very much, you know, like adults who had something worthy to contribute from an early age, and i think it was something that clearly sticks with you. >> ms. cheney, you're just out with a best selling book, "james madison: a life reconsidered." you worked on it for five years. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> you know, it's funny -- >> four more years! four more years! >> i was chatting with the vice president backstage, and i was saying -- i bet that never gets old. and he said -- >> [inaudible] [laughter] [inaudible] >> and we are having some problems with the feed coming to us from "the politico" playbook lunch. going to try to reestablish that connection and get you back to the discussion with former vice president dick cheney and his family. [inaudible conversations] >> take you back there to the conversation with vice president dick cheney. in the meantime, let's take a look at what's going on today in the u.s. house and the senate. going to be working on 2015 funding for the treasury department and other agencies in the senate today. they'll be in at 2:00 eastern time. no legislative work today, but this week working on birth control access after the hobby lobby decision by supreme court. >> and we're trying to reestablish our connection. we were in a conversation with former vice president dick cheney and his family. "the politico" laybook luncheon. while we try to reestablish that connection, get you back to the conversation, we're going to take a look at a recent christian science monitor discussion. this is with ed royce, the house foreign affairs chair. >> thanks for coming, everybody. i'm dave cook from the monitor. our guest this morning is representative ed royce, chairman of the house foreign affairs committee. this is his first visit with the better journalism through sausage club, so we're especially grateful to him for doing this on a friday morning. he's a native californian and a graduate of california state university school of business administration. his interest this politics is wrongstanding. -- longstanding. he belonged to the young americans for freedom at cal state and headed youth for reagan in the gipper's 1976 challenge to then-president -- >> just executive director. >> oh. still -- >> not that ambitious. >> -- very early. after a brief career in the private sector in 1982 our guest was elected to the california state senate where he was very active in victims' rights issues, authoring the first law to headache it a felony to stalk someone. he was elected to the u.s. house in 1992 and and has been reelected by wide margins ever since. he's a member of the house foreign affairs committee since coming to congress and was named its chair this november of 2012. so much for biography, now on to the ever-popular process portion of our program. as always, we are on the record here. please, no live blogging or tweeting, in short, no filing of any kind while the breakfast is underway to give us time to actually listen to what our guest says. there's no embargo when the session ends. to save you the trouble of having to grab a breakfast photo on your smartphone, we will e-mail several pictures of the session to all reporters here as soon as the breakfast ends. as regular attendees know, if you'd like to ask a question, please do the traditional thing and send me a subtle, nonthreatening signal, and i'll happily call on one and all. we're going to start off by offering our guest the opportunity to make some opening remarks, then we'll move to questions around the table. with that, sir, thanks for coming. we really appreciate it. >> thank you, dave can. thanks for the opportunity. let me begin by saying i was a fan of reagan's, and one of the things i noticed about his conduct on the hill was the way that he and tip o'neill conducted themselves. and it was a way in which, i think, created an atmosphere in which things could be accomplished on the hill. one of my objectives on my committee, the foreign affairs committee, has been to try to create a similar type of dialogue. and with eliot engel, my ranking member, and myself what we've attempted to do with the members is to get them all involved in foreign affairs, to create a very open dialogue, to create a balanced way in which they not only participate, but we have these delegations which are engaged which we take overseas whether it's to ukraine recently or to the middle east or to asia and try to reach a consensus to do our job in a way that provides a united front in terms of the u.s. position in these parts of the world. and i would, i would say i think so far we've been largely successful in that endeavor on the committee. i will just give you a few examples of areas that we've been involved in, and then i though you want to ask questions. but if i could give you sort of a broad overview here, some of the concerns that i've had about how the united states could be more effective overseas. and one of those has been with our communications. one of the early impacts that affected me was an exchange program years ago when i was in west germany and east germany. and in east germany at that time i saw what radio free europe, radio liberty, was able to do in order to instruct young germans in political pluralism, in tolerance, in all of these ideals that helped shape in eastern europe a very different attitude than the bombastic propaganda that was coming over from west eventualny. germany. instead, by using east german reporters and by having a vision of how we would introduce and balance information, we were able really during the reagan administration, in this country was able to reshape the thinking there. what eliot engel and i are trying to do with our overhaul of the broadcasting board of governors and our system of reinvigorating radio free europe, radio liberty and voa is to get back to that effective type of communication, and we have talked to, you know, our former secretary of state and others who have testified about this, secretary clinton and others, and they say the current system is practically defunction. defunct. so we have passed legislation over to the senate, we're working on this right now, and we believe it could have a very big impact, a very -- it could create a very real change to the way in which we can effectively offset propaganda in russia or lack of information in the middle east and provide access for people to have more ideas about political pluralism and intolerance in china. on another subject, we have spent a great deal of time on the committee following the situation in iran. remember, for many of these members of the foreign affairs committee they have a lot of experience over the years with deception on the part of the government in iran. and one of our concerns was to find pressure points where we might be able to get the iranians to the table. we did that with legislation on sanctions, and this, this past session we passed legislation authored by me and cosponsored by elliott engel which -- eliot engel which really gives the ayatollah a choice, a choice between compromise on the nuclear program or economic collapse. now, we were able to pass that bill out of committee with bipartisan support unanimously and pass it off of the floor with 400 votes to 20. the administration opposed the legislation. but it was the, but it was our opinion on the committee -- those of us with experience in foreign affairs -- that this type of pressure was necessary in order to be taken seriously, in order for the u.s. position to be taken seriously. the administration has held the legislation up in the senate, but as you know, we're close to two-thirds. and as the situation comets to drag -- continues to drag on and, of course, this week some of you will be following our secretary of state and wendy sherman's further negotiations in vienna with the iranians on this, but it's a good reminder in terms of the nature of this regime as we now see that these m302s, these very long-range rockets which iran transferred to hamas last night were being launched. and they can, of course, hit tel aviv, they can hit jerusalem. it's a reminder that whatever negotiations we have ongoing with iran, there is this history of deception which was shared with us by the international agencies which conduct oversight with respect to the attempts to get iran to comply with the u.n. security council resolutions and with international norms of behavior. so these are some of the issues we're working on. a third issue would be trying to open our, the markets overseas to u.s. exports. as you know, we're in competition with china with two very different models. the united states is trying to sell the ideal of opening to trade to our exports overseas with high standards for intellectual property, you know? .. in southeast asia and along the pacific rim is to pull the country together with these high standards. we're attempting to do the same thing simultaneously with europe. if we succeed in this, then we will have a

Transcripts For SFGTV2 20130711

places as much. and also, i'm the co-facilitator of a support group for medically disabled people and we need a place to meet too and to socialize and it's very hard to get places if you don't have the money to cover for meeting places and since paina is open to all groups, it's very very important that it stays open. i think it a political thing, it's competition with theatres because the money they have and the power of their voice and they are going to just want to close them out which is not fair at all. i hate to say it but i think it's racial too. it's very important that there be more variety in the area. there is too much down sizing again because of the economy and they did what was requested of them for this sound proofing and so what's the problem? they just, they are special because they are open and free and they reach all people of all income. so. please reconsider and allow them to stay. thank you very much. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> i'm a retired parent, teacher. i moved to san francisco because my son is here. my mother is in the audience. she had four heart attacks. i wanted to say that this is a wonderful place. i'm just learning that paina provides all of the above. i would encourage the opening of paina and as a small business they would be able to contribute, their willingness, their big heartiness towards all of that. the other thing, my mother is in the audience, she can not speak for all with people with disabilities. i'm a classical musician and i wanted to bring the opera and symphony people. they are from my community and they are more than welcome to have us perform them as well. i'm there is mother of children in their 30s. they love the wholesome place. i'm also attracting people as a member of the community for people to hang out. i have a wonderful time there to eat before i go to the movies. it's a wonderful place and i think sundance is attracting a lot of business from that too. i'm a great supporter of paina and want to see them viable and a contribution to japan town. >> thank you. >> thank you. honorable commission ers, i'm martin simon and here on behalf of sundance cinema which you know is a neighbor to this project. this commission has held numerous hearings on this application. i believe this is the 5th or 6th hearing. the commission has already heard from different parties on this project. the last application, it was denied. we were here on the original calendar for the final determination on the denial motion. the condition to deny this application is a correct one. the reason set forth in the staff report are compelling. this proposal for a loud late night nightclub use is entirely inconsistent with japan town and with it's on going revitalization efforts. the commission has heard from the leadership of the japan town community who have come out strongly against this proposal. i'm sorry to report contrary to some of the representation that you have heard today that the problems with paina, interfering with it's neighbors are continuing. even since the last hearing on this matter where you voted to deny this application, there was another incident. on july 4th, paina closed to the public and allowed a late night event all the way up to midnight. the police department and the entertainment commission had to be involved again. this nightclub use is not compatible use for japan town. the loud late night disturbances and dangers and the existing businesses and survival of businesses including sundance. the japan town leadership is against this and your honors have received complaints in the last week. i ask you to please affirm your decision to deny this application. >> thank you. any further comment? please come forward. hi. i'm the owner. i'm 25 years old. i look at all the entertainment that happens at paina. we are not a nightclub. we are a restaurant and lounge. nothing loud, nothing crazy. if you go back on march 21st, we had a violation. that was my 25th birthday party. we did go er a half hour. we apologize for that. the reason why we went over, they were singing happy birthday to three people. we were not trying to be a disruptive neighbor. we are trying to work with everyday. i just hope that we can get our license even just for the weekend, just so that people can have a good time throughout the night without ended at 10:00 and everyone going home and from 10-1 on friday and saturday, it's dead. if we get our license, people can hang out at at all ages. hopefully you can't grant us our license. thank you. >> thank you. commissioners, good afternoon. i'm bob yam gucci with the task force. i have not heard anything new. you have heard several deliberations and a lot of facts and i want to step up here to say that japan town task force continues to urge that you deny this application. thank you. >> thank you. >> any further public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> commissioner moore? >> for those members of the public who spoke in support of paina today. i think we appreciate that there is support all the way through, however, today's agenda item is not to reopen the case and hear the pros an cons but to move hard on what this commission has come up with. there has been almost a year with repeated attempts to come to agreements but it just did not come together. i have to assume with technical advice from acoustical consultants and building experts that this particular situation cannot be fixed in a manner that would indeed allow us to expand the operation with the type of application that is in front of us. i am very clear and determined to move what we decided last time forward and i make a motion to disapprove. >> thank you. >> commissioner borden? >> yes, we first heard this case in august of 2012 and we had multiple hearings on the topic. the commission came from a place for paina, i have been there. i think it's a beautiful location and what you have done is amazing. unfortunately the entire time that we've been hearing this case, there have been sounds and other violations. if you are not even on your best behavior when you are coming back before us, there is no trust. the entire community doesn't have trust because there has been repeated violations. unfortunately the law doesn't allow us to make excuses for birthday parties and other things. it duntd work that way. if you can get it together you can come back in a year for conditional use. that's what the law allows, i would hope that you can work with the community to make that happen. just to make this clear to the members of the public. this does not close down paina. it can still operate, it just can't have amplified sound. it does not close down the restaurant establishment. i would hope that as a result with the hearing, that you would work with the community that perhaps in a year we can be in a different place. the reason we continue this item so many times is because we really want to support the paina lounge and unfortunately the good faith effort did not happen last year. >> commissioner antonini? >> yeah. i agree with the other commissioners. i think that the concept sounds like a good one, but i think this site is a wrong one for the intents. it's fine with non-amplified, and closing at certain hours. that seems to be doable but to try to make it into a late night situation, a lot of the other entertainment venues and even their representative spoke of are places that are more freestanding while there are still more neighborhood issues regarding these. they have a lot more room way from their most immediate neighbors and almost all the leaders of japan town have spoken against it. i think it's just not the right site. i wish them well continuing their operations as it now exist and being able to have the accessory entertainment along with their restaurant use. >> commissioner sugaya? >> yes, just a follow up on commissioner borden's conditional use permit. i think i asked at the last hearing that with respect to hearing limited entertainment use that still continues. does limited entertainment prohibit amplified sound? >> it would not. it's more limited to the area and there is hours. >> they can keep the installed sound equipment and use it with the bands or the -- >> my understanding is that yes with a limited life performance permit, they can keep the amplified music and only limited to the time and the area and the sound level that was agreed to on their permit. >> all right. i think with that clarification, then to the project sponsor, if you -- you know, i don't know the size of the area, i haven't been to your place, but, i know that enlarging it would make possible probably more people to be there and larger ensembles to be there, but given the current situation which i think the commission is going to pass a disapproval, you may want to think about continuing your entertainment use obviously which you will, but in a way that i think if you do come back in a year, that both the community, sundance, the spa and everyone will be on your side at that point. i think if that happens, the commission will entertain and approval. >> thank you. i add on that i feel similarly that there is no problem with the fact that there is music and entertainment. it's the level of the noise that exceeded the dba and time extension. i hope that you are able to continue your business for the next year and come back in an i year and show that there haven't been any citations and this commission would support this. the clerk: there is a motion to adopt this. that motion passes unanimously 5-0. >> the commission will take a 20-minute break.

Transcripts For SFGTV 20130713

city several times where this is. we already provide housing in the bay view for homeless people. we are compassionate and caring, but the last thing this shelter is very close to a problematic liquor store. if you look at the overhead, a 1 block area around the liquor there is almost 108 calls for police with problems. mother browns had 79. >> now your time is up. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> commissioner, 428 portrero, i requested a continuance based on the sunshine ordinance request. i haven't gotten anything. i humbly request that you grant the request until the sunshine ordinance has had the opportunity to hear the case to separate the two issues. >> can it be discussed today, that was my question because i previously asked for a discussion on it. >> it can't be discussed. it's not on calendar. >> okay. thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please. we arrived at church on sunday morning and sitting outside in the alley.. outside the erected gate outside the door. there were two men with guns on their hips and dressed in uniforms. their armored vehicle was parked. today was sunday, not dare to enter we ask. may we join you for service today. no. we breathe, we relax and try to enjoy our silent outdoor service. the police must have called the ambulance. when they arrived they put on latex gloves. this is our church and this is dan's community center. we wonder how long this has been dan's community center. for a third of his life, for all of it? for all of it plus some. what year are we in any way. this year the church turns 100. we wonder what will happen to dan. we haven't seen him since the incident. will he be put in jail or put back in the community center soon or will he be incarcerated for the rest of his life. we arrived at church on monday morning the next day, we noticed the scuffeling of milk crates. there is a police car parked or 476, or 474, we dare not to venture that far. there is a woman as to communicate to each other the dangers of our municipality or the danger of our children. >> thank you. next speaker, please? linda chapman from knob hill neighbors. we are in the process of planning the community in what it is community organization for when one or two former supervisors will be speaking on that on the fact that neighborhood groups do not negotiate with developers in order to support a project and neighborhood groups do not take money from developers. we'll speak on the interest if there is a group that takes money from developers. the land use has had discussions about this recently with connection with the knob hill project. someone came from the mayor's office on the economic and work development on unrelated issues at the end of the impact on traffic. he said we just haven't figured out what the community benefits will be. we have to think what the community benefits are before this project. i went, oh. i thought the community benefits was what the project itself could bring and mitigation with regard to ceqa impacts and so on and sometimes that might involve money. i recommended myself with regard to the impact on the van ness plan from cpmc that since it was eliminating housing that would otherwise be built then to give money to cdc to affordable housing. there was a connection to that. from where we will be hearing from an architecturaly significant church, the alternative of having many housing there and the density and the facility and open space and the developer will give $60,000 to other groups unrelated until we can figure it out. that was up again in the land use committee and the masonic, there were about 12 people and they all burst into laughter when they heard this. $60,000. like this is the cheap date. at the masonic without the knowledge of any of the neighbors or nob hill association people. which none of the people in knob hill association know about and ceremony was not agreed to buy the officers who used to be down here and a personal on every ticket which the cs event and sf t said this is a conflict with the neighbors. >> thank you. >> good afternoon, lorraine, improvement association. i was surprised that any neighborhood organization would take any money from a project sponsor because we have to maintain our neutrality. i think the commission should look on suspicion whether hi neighborhood association is taking any money and i would add that neighborhoods have improvement in our organization. we look at each project that will benefit the neighborhood and city. thank you. >> any further general public comment? >> seeing none, public comment is closed. >> commissioners we can move to the regular calendar. item 3 was pulled off for consent. we can take that matter at this time. item 20130822 c. please please note that on february, they continued the matter to april 11th for independent sound engineers along with the entertainment sound engineer to determine the level of noise. please note that on june 26th, the commission adopted a vote by 10-0. it's on your calendar today to approve by staff. >> good afternoon, vice-president wu, and staff. the proposal is to add a restaurant an allowing business. it's a 2 story building. within the last week the department received eight individual e-mails in support of the project. i have copies available upon request. the problg -- project was heard on august 16th. at the june 6th hearing the commission adopted to approve this project. this concludes staff's presentation. i'm happy to answer any questions. >> thank you. project sponsor? >> vice-president wu. commissioners, i'm here representing the lounge. you heard this on three separate occasions. but i was brought into to assist them with their entertainment and sound issues. i'm an expert in this field. i represent approximately 25 entertainment venues in san francisco including the grand, slims nightclub and great american music hall. i this i the problem is fixable. i think the neighbors will and must get together eventually. they already have an entertainment license although limited. i'm asking you to take one last look at this particular venue. i ask this because i truly believe that we have a unique and culturally diverse and really a wonderful entertainment venue. the place is beautiful. at least half of this commission has been on the premises and i think they will agree with me that it is a great place. i think the project is necessary and desirable as it's individually owned and it serving the public, serving a diverse public in the neighborhood. therefore this is very important. i would like to address the three citations. we are here today because there were three citations and the commission is concerned that thises not going to be an operator who would respect the neighborhood. these complaints are serious, they are regrettable, and they will not happen again. no matter what happens here today, my client gets it and is fully committed to being a good neighbor and always fully compliant with san francisco in the entertainment law and abc act. sundance is a beautiful and classy theatre and a civic treasure. their representative have beat on my clients about these citations, but if you go back to the august hearing, the vice-president of marketing admitted before you that they had an entertainment venue, talked to miss kane. they have been a hundred times in violation with no entertainment license. the city loves diversity, but we have a real diverse group here and i would ask that we look at this, help these people out. the city, i look back. i haven't seen anybody quite as diverse as this since club 6 went down. please take a second look at this. thank you. let's open it up for public comment. i have speaker cards. if i called your name, you can lineup on the side of the room. thank you. >> if your name has been called, you can approach the podium. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is jordan cohen. i'm the director of the foundation, it's a 501 c 3 in large scale art in city of san francisco. this is the first time i know this grass roots has been affected by the theatre. this is a place that had contributed to march of dimes and leukemia and multiple groups. people come from stockton and san jose to see these groups. fashion shows, drag shows, comedy, jazz, family students, polynesians and the gay community feel very welcome. it's a free stage. performers can charge cover and take it all. what this is is artistic benefit and utility. in sundance doesn't want to compete with pain a. it a phenomenal setting, delicious food and contemporary and warm. performers who can't perform a yoshis do perform. according to my research, it was just pointed out that sundance had live entertainment for a year 1/2 without an entertainment license. paina has gotten one. so paina has operated for 1 hour and sundance for hundreds. i was there last night. if you can look down here, this is what was going on last night. this phone call that has been installed throughout the entire sealing and the wall behind the audience. the event last night had 50 easels set up with blank canvasses. paina happily gave the space for free and the artist instructor took home 100 percent of what each student paid to learn that evening. it was a great venue. this you for your time. >> thank you. >> hi. my name is beth crumb a. i'm a college student. paina is a great place for everyone whether they are black, white, gay. college students or kids and working professionals can enjoy. everyone that comes to paina feels safe and relaxed. it's a great place for diversity and acceptance. thank you. >> good afternoon, my name is ruby, i'm a parent and special need local worker. i meet there regularly and i do notice many students, all special needs come because they are ada accessible. it's a great place. i wholeheartedly support them, thank you. >> thank you. let me call a couple more names. amy newman, >> good afternoon, my name is joanna tan. i'm the manager at paina restaurant. i want to say that paina has given me the opportunity as a graduate to come from culinary school to work. what i want to bring to your attention is that during these complaints, we were willing to comply. because of the complaints they were getting from their customers, if they let us know that we were more than willing to work with them on that issue, but rather than working with us, rather than talking to us and letting us know about these issues, they went to court about it. they brought up these issues and started using slanderous comments. just a lot of things that shouldn't have been brought up in the first place. it should have been an issue between two neighbors and letting us know and working through it. apparently that's not what happened and i wanted to bring up the fact that the bad thing they are saying we are doing. every place has those things. if you look passed that and look at the good things we have, the non-profit organizations we do, the fund-raisers, the performers that we help achieve their dreams, it's one thing balance over somethingel. you have to look passed those things to see the good. thank you. >> thank you. >> my name is anna rodriguez and i'm here to support paina. i have been in the city for 40 something years an as we know with the recession a lot of things are closing and one thing we really need is something that is open to people of all ages without a coverage charge and paina does that. there is so much competition also. the last thing we want is for these places to close. theatres are closing mostly because there are vcr's. we just need other entertainment. i think music is very up lifting instead of these neglect ative movies and fighting on the streets. where kids can go where they can communicate with each other, they will have a much more up lifted spirit. this is a very positive thing for the community very much needed now. it will enhance their lives. while this is also right next to and around the upper class, the kids can't go to those places as much. and also, i'm the co-facilitator of a support group for medically disabled people and we need a place to meet too and to socialize and it's very hard to get places if you don't have the money to cover for meeting places and since paina is open to all groups, it's very very important that it stays open. i think it a political thing, it's competition with theatres because the money they have and the power of their voice and they are going to just want to close them out which is not fair at all. i hate to say it but i think it's racial too. it's very important that there be more variety in the area. there is too much down sizing again because of the economy and they did what was requested of them for this sound proofing and so what's the problem? they just, they are special because they are open and free and they reach all people of all income. so. please reconsider and allow them to stay. thank you very much. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> i'm a retired parent, teacher. i moved to san francisco because my son is here. my mother is in the audience. she had four heart attacks. i wanted to say that this is a wonderful place. i'm just learning that paina provides all of the above. i would encourage the opening of paina and as a small business they would be able to contribute, their willingness, their big heartiness towards all of that. the other thing, my mother is in the audience, she can not speak for all with people with disabilities. i'm a classical musician and i wanted to bring the opera and symphony people. they are from my community and they are more than welcome to have us perform them as well. i'm there is mother of children in their 30s. they love the wholesome place. i'm also attracting people as a member of the community for people to hang out. i have a wonderful time there to eat before i go to the movies. it's a wonderful place and i think sundance is attracting a lot of business from that too. i'm a great supporter of paina and want to see them viable and a contribution to japan town. >> thank you. >> thank you. honorable commission ers, i'm martin simon and here on behalf of sundance cinema which you know is a neighbor to this project. this commission has held numerous hearings on this application. i believe this is the 5th or 6th hearing. the commission has already heard from different parties on this project. the last application, it was denied. we were here on the original calendar for the final determination on the denial motion. the condition to deny this application is a correct one. the reason set forth in the staff report are compelling. this proposal for a loud late night nightclub use is entirely inconsistent with japan town and with it's on going revitalization efforts. the commission has heard from the leadership of the japan town community who have come out strongly against this proposal. i'm sorry to report contrary to some of the representation that you have heard today that the problems with paina, interfering with it's neighbors are continuing. even since the last hearing on this matter where you voted to deny this application, there was another incident. on july 4th, paina closed to the public and allowed a late night event all the way up to midnight. the police department and the entertainment commission had to be involved again. this nightclub use is not compatible use for japan town. the loud late night disturbances and dangers and the existing businesses and survival of businesses including sundance. the japan town leadership is against this and your honors have received complaints in the last week. i ask you to please affirm your decision to deny this application. >> thank you. any further comment? please come forward. hi. i'm the owner. i'm 25 years old. i look at all the entertainment that happens at paina. we are not a nightclub. we are a restaurant and lounge. nothing loud, nothing crazy. if you go back on march 21st, we had a violation. that was my 25th birthday party. we did go over a half hour. we apologize for that. the reason why we went over, they were singing happy birthday to three people. we were not trying to be a disruptive neighbor. we are trying to work with everyday. i just hope that we can get our license even just for the weekend, just so that people can have a good time throughout the night without ended at 10:00 and everyone going home and from 10-1 on friday and saturday, it's dead. if we get our license, people can hang out at at all ages. hopefully you can't grant us our license. thank you. >> thank you. commissioners, good afternoon. i'm bob yam gucci with the task force. i have not heard anything new. you have heard several deliberations and a lot of facts and i want to step up here to say that japan town task force continues to urge that you deny this application. thank you. >> thank you. >> any further public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> commissioner moore? >> for those members of the public who spoke in support of paina today. i think we appreciate that there is support all the way through, however, today's agenda item is not to reopen the case and hear the pros an cons but to move hard on what this commission has come up with. there has been almost a year with repeated attempts to come to agreements but it just did not come together. i have to assume with technical advice from acoustical consultants and building experts that this particular situation cannot be fixed in a manner that would indeed allow us to expand the operation with the type of application that is in front of us. i am very clear and determined to move what we decided last time forward and i make a motion to disapprove. >> thank

Florence Police charge man suspected in crime spree

The Florence Police Department says the recent arrest of a man may put an end to a recent string of property crimes.

Town orders demo of fire-scarred Hauppauge condos

Father-son duo will discuss politics at SIU Student Center

Sheila Simon noted that her father would “certainly would have admired Ray LaHood’s spirit of being a Republican working with Democrats.” Paul Simon’s foundation for bipartisanship was respect, she said.

SIU's Paul Simon Institute hosts Ray and Darin LaHood Oct. 30

The political careers of a well-known Illinois political father-son duo and a special program that looks to the next 25 years of Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s Paul Simon Public Policy Institute is set for Oct. 30.

SIU's Paul Simon Institute hosts Ray and Darin LaHood Oct. 30

Athletes of the Week - The Republic News

Olympians strike early in shutout win vs. Stars